Supreme court hastens to close siege on Lula in Brazil

Staff Writer | August 3, 2018

The Federal Supreme Court (STF) could judge on August 9 the request for the release and ineligibility of former President Lula, in order to prevent his candidacy from being registered, the digital newspaper Brasil 247 warned.

LatAm Lula was recently the victim of another judicial outrage

The clear intention of the judicial core of the coup is to empty the act of August 15, when thousands of Brazilians are expected to accompany the registration of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as a presidential candidate for the Workers' Party (PT) at the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), the publication said.

This time, the STF's game of marked cards was not even disguised, it added before pointing out the Supreme Court Chief Justice, Carmen Lucia, will go to trial immediately. Hence, they already ordered to reinforce the security of the external area of the courthouse, closing off the access through the main entrance.

In statements published on Wednesday, the minister and rapporteur of the controversial anti-corruption operation Lava Jato in the STF, Edson Fachin, made a statement because the highest judicial body in Brazil was judging the electoral situation of Lula, a political prisoner 118 days ago and leader in all the polls of intention to vote.

At the end of June, Fachin himself was the protagonist of one more maneuver against the founder of the PT, by preventing the second chamber of the STF from judging an appeal by the defense of the former president to suspend the execution of his sentence and send the case to the full court, for fear that this collegiate would order the release of Lula.

According to the lawyer Marco Aurelio de Carvalho, a member of the Brazilian Association of Jurists for Democracy (ABJD), the decision to take the vote to the plenary was political.

In a categorical statement, he said there is indisputable judicial activism, a manipulation orchestrated by the Judicial Branch, and that in the second chamber of the STF Fachin he has a minority.

That is why, in order to achieve the result it wanted: to take Lula out of the electoral process and keep him in prison, it sent the matter to the plenary, a questionable, atypical action, and, in my evaluation, absolutely personal, he insisted.

De Carvalho also criticised the fact that Fachin added to the analysis of Lula's appeal an assessment of the application of Article 26-C of Complementary Law 64/90, which refers to the Ineligibility Law, arguing that it is up to the collegiate body to analyse this type of precautionary measure.

Fachin,' he said, 'placed an accessory with nothing to do with Lula's appeal, what we call an extra request, because the defense of the former president did not ask for that matter. 'Now, without it being appropriate, the criminal and electoral issues will be analyzed in the same trial', he remarked.

Sentenced without evidence to 12 years and a month in prison, Lula was recently the victim of another judicial outrage when, on July 8, a warrant for his immediate release, issued by Judge Rogerio Favreto of the court of appeals in Porto Alegre, was disregarded by the Federal Police. ■